June 11 Bologna - I drive better when i am drunk.

The heat wave continues but the desire to feast upon the local food and bevvy is still strong. The other day i wandered into the nizzarely named ''nu lounge bar' which is right up there with the strange english names for businesses, My other favourite in this category is the ''PIZZA UP!'' in Urbania but the winnder has to be Italian mobile phone company called ''WIND'' thats wind like the breeze not like the clock, they have large banners around the place which simply say ''avete wind?'' translating, without need for massaging into '' do you have wind?''

At the nu i dined on carpaccio with carciofi and rucola, its the second time i have had carpacio here and both times its more like a slab of raw meat that gets delivered to you rather than the thin shavings i had become accustomed to in australia, but accompanied by the local oil and cheese it went down an sbolute treat, knocked down a couple of glasses of (gasp) semillon and one of the local semifreddo with chocolate specialties and i was anyones.

So nicely sloshed and with no real desire to head back out into the sunshine i outstayed my welcome to the point where the owner tony came over and asked me a few questions,.. most of which i understood and was able to respond to... i made the mistake of asking about one of the waitresses, he said ''that would be my wife'' but i managed to weazel my way out of it and suggest that i was referring to the other waitress who obviously wasnt italian... ''ah yes she is german'' and he invites her over for a drink... her italian was better than her english but also better than mine so we sat and talked about how she managed to wind up in bologna... again they all seemed fascinated by australia, despite my efforts to tell them that there really wasnt anything to be fascinated by other than the physical landscape of the place... but they all seem to yearn for empty space, where as we seem to yearn to spend time crammed into tiny interesting spaces wondering why the locals dont appreciate the culture that surrounds them.

It's kind of like Tasmania,... which is intersting because so few things are... We mainlanders think of tasmania as this beautiful untouched paradise a treasure which must be preserved at any cost in todays dollars, whereas the locals have to live there and after a few years of waking up to views across the mountains you learn to build houses facing away from them because thats the direction the cold winds come from and you dump your rubbish in the river because the council want you to pay extra to have the rubbish collected from outside your driveway.

I passed a few hours with my new german italian english speaking friends, she took me to the public which houses an old anatomy lecture theatre complete with wooden statues of skinned blokes and 3 rows of wooden seats arranged arouind a cold marble slab ) i didnt lie down on this one ) she asked if she could take a few photos of me, cant say i blame her cos i am freaking gorgeous... will have to keep an eye out for her exhibition when i make it up north to deutchand.